GE Hydro plant closure to cost 450 Montreal jobs
Last Updated: Friday, September 28, 2007 | 4:24 PM ET
The Canadian Press
About 450 jobs will be lost in a global restructuring of GE Hydro's operations, which will force the closure of its turbine manufacturing plant in the Montreal suburb of Lachine next June.
The company will also cease operations in Peterborough, Ont., but it's not yet clear how many jobs will be affected there, where workers are primarily involved in engineering and technical drafting.
The Montreal workers are mostly welders, machinists and warehouse workers. There are also some engineers.
Union spokesman Dave Chartrand said employees feared a change was coming after the division's sale was scuttled.
"It's certainly a tough blow," he said.
Workers at Quebec servicing facilities in St-Augustin and Beloeil aren't affected by the decision.
GE Hydro has 700 employees in Canada.
"This is not closing because of any kind of in-country situation," GE spokeswoman Kim Warburton said.
"This is a global realignment of the entire business."
The restructuring was pursued after an agreement to sell GE Hydro fell apart earlier this year.
Under the changes, the number of global locations and plants will be trimmed, and the GE Energy division's headquarters will be relocated from New York to Brazil, with manufacturing plants in Brazil and Finland.
The subsidiary of American giant General Electric has made more than half of the Hydro-Québec turbines installed at the James Bay dams.
The Montreal plant's activities will end with the completion of these contracts, employees were told Thursday.
Warburton said the restructuring realigns the division's activities with regions that are expected to have the strongest growth.
She said the number of new turbines being sold in Canada has dramatically fallen. Its main contracts are with Hydro-Québec and Manitoba Hydro.
The closure of the 89-year-old facility is another blow to Montreal's manufacturing sector, which has been struck hard by the appreciation of the Canadian dollar and growing competition from emerging countries, particularly China.
At its peak in the 1970s, GE Hydro employed more than 3,500 workers.
